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Topic: Cannabis (Read 11726 times)

Unimaginative Username

Coke and opium were legal too. I also can't see how Mexicans using Cannabis holds any relevance to the laws in the UK - my browser blocks the article from loading, but since the website seems to be pro-drugs I would assume it may be purposely misleading with the aim to favour drug legalisation.

What are the potential issues that arise from legalising it's usage though? For example, legalising cannabis would logically also increase the number of people who are driving whilst intoxicated by it - "Generally,regular cannabis users displayed more driving errors than non-regular cannabis users in contrast to expectations"[1] and if the mentioned study is correct then it is safe to assume that the number of motor collisions will marginally increase, causing an increased risk of injury and death to other drivers and pedestrians. For this reason alone I would be against it being fully legalised.

There are also concerns of it being a "gateway-drug", but this is difficult to prove or disprove - and most likely varies on the person.

As a prescription drug for medical use, I would not be opposed to it. It's definitely not as hard as something like Tramadol, which is a highly addictive painkiller which can be obtained via prescriptions - as a side note I would not recommend Tramadol, pain is preferable to it. So provided there is sufficient evidence that it has medical uses then I don't see an issue here.

As always, there is a lot of bias surrounding this issue and I find that this makes it difficult to discern reliable articles from conjecture. Because of this 'cloud of doubt' I find it hard to believe that the government would ever legalise such a thing, especially since it would almost seem hypocritical to do so with the offensives against smoking currently going on.

What are the potential issues that arise from legalising it's usage though? For example, legalising cannabis would logically also increase the number of people who are driving whilst intoxicated by it - "Generally, regular cannabis users displayed more driving errors than non-regular cannabis users in contrast to expectations"[1] and if the mentioned study is correct then it is safe to assume that the number of motor collisions will marginally increase, causing an increased risk of injury and death to other drivers and pedestrians. For this reason alone I would be against it being fully legalised.

This applies more to alcohol, which is legal.

Based on personal experience, one is inclined to drive significantly slow when high. I don't know how to explain it; it's highly not recommended at all, but it's like that - you'd drive way, waaaaay slower than usual. Of course you will commit errors because you're thinking is affected, but they aren't like alcohol-related motor accidents which typically involve violence and over-speeding.

Coke and opium were legal too. I also can't see how Mexicans using Cannabis holds any relevance to the laws in the UK - my browser blocks the article from loading, but since the website seems to be pro-drugs I would assume it may be purposely misleading with the aim to favour drug legalisation.

I'll just copy/paste the whole thing in here. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not it's biased. Also I'm guessing the whole stigma of marijuana carried over to the UK from America.

“With so much information coming out about the medical value of marijuana, and that marijuana is not as dangerous as alcohol, why was it made illegal in the first place?”

Sincerely,

Looking for a history lessonDear Looking,

That is an excellent question. Now that many politicians and the public are taking a more objective look at marijuana, many are asking about the legal history of marijuana and how it ended up in the category of drugs deemed most dangerous by the federal government (Schedule I).

To understand how we ended up here, it is important to go back to what was happening in the United States in the early 1900’s just after the Mexican Revolution. At this time we saw an influx of immigration from Mexico into states like Texas and Louisiana. Not surprising, these new Americans brought with them their native language, culture and customs. One of these customs was the use of cannabis as a medicine and relaxant.

Mexican immigrants referred to this plant as “marihuana”. While Americans were very familiar with “cannabis” because it was present in almost all tinctures and medicines available at the time, the word “marihuana” was a foreign term. So, when the media began to play on the fears that the public had about these new citizens by falsely spreading claims about the “disruptive Mexicans” with their dangerous native behaviors including marihuana use, the rest of the nation did not know that this “marihuana” was a plant they already had in their medicine cabinets.

The demonization of the cannabis plant was an extension of the demonization of the Mexican immigrants. In an effort to control and keep tabs on these new citizens, El Paso, TX borrowed a play from San Francisco’s playbook, which had outlawed opium decades earlier in an effort to control Chinese immigrants. The idea was to have an excuse to search, detain and deport Mexican immigrants.

That excuse became marijuana.

This method of controlling people by controlling their customs was quite successful, so much so that it became a national strategy for keeping certain populations under the watch and control of the government.

During hearings on marijuana law in the 1930’s, claims were made about marijuana’s ability to cause men of color to become violent and solicit sex from white women. This imagery became the backdrop for the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 which effectively banned its use and sales.

While the Act was ruled unconstitutional years later, it was replaced with the Controlled Substances Act in the 1970’s which established Schedules for ranking substances according to their dangerousness and potential for addiction. Cannabis was placed in the most restrictive category, Schedule I, supposedly as a place holder while then President Nixon commissioned a report to give a final recommendation.

The Schafer Commission, as it was called, declared that marijuana should not be in Schedule I and even doubted its designation as an illicit substance. However, Nixon discounted the recommendations of the commission, and marijuana remains a Schedule I substance.

In 1996, California became the first state to approve the use of marijuana for medical purposes, ending its 59 year reign as an illicit substance with no medical value. Prior to 1937, cannabis had enjoyed a 5000 year history as a therapeutic agent across many cultures. In this context, its blip as an illicit and dangerous drug was dwarfed by its role as a medicine.

Opponents of medical marijuana regulations claim that there is not enough research to warrant medicinal use, but supporters of medical marijuana point to the 5000 years of history where cannabis was widely used as evidence for its medical efficacy.

Now that 23 states, plus Washington, DC, have passed medical marijuana laws, the public is questioning the utility of keeping marijuana under lock and key, especially in light of the racist and propagandized basis for making it illegal in the first place.

In just a few weeks, Florida, Oregon, Alaska and Washington DC voters will have the opportunity to put an additional nail in the coffin of prohibition by voting to legalize medical access in Florida and adult access in Oregon, Alaska and Washington DC. Changing the marijuana laws in these states and more to come is one of the first steps in dismantling the racially motivated war on drugs.

Sincerely,

The Doctors

Dr. Malik Burnett is a former surgeon and physician advocate. He also served as executive director of a medical marijuana nonprofit organization. Amanda Reiman, PhD, holds a doctorate in Social Welfare and teaches classes on drug policy at the University of California-Berkeley."

Also I'd be happy enough for it to just be available on prescription. I just want cannabis oil to be available to those who suffer from cancer among other things.

Back to wi-fi, back to posting.So there are a few things we've been tossing around, which are not all the same.Let me enumerate:"Cannabis should be legalized." vs. "Cannabis should be legalized for medical purposes."It looks like we all agree on the medical part.

"Cannabis should be legalized because it was legal in the past."Well, that's not an argument in itself. Witch burning was also legal at some point and I doubt that means we should get it back.

"Cannabis should be legalized because people consumed it in the past."It doesn't really matter for the question ("Should cannabis be legalized?") whether people have used it before, so it's actually a mock argumentIn any case, we were referring to different things here. You quoted 4000 years of medical use as proof that it had been in use for a long time.I was referring it not having been in widespread everyday use in Western civilization, the way that alcohol and tobacco were consumed by people for centuries. I cannot speak for other parts of the world, but cannabis was not a staple in the life of Western people until maybe the (late?) 19th century. Even then, most people likely only bought it as a part of quack "patent medicines". And I made that point to demonstrate why it was easier to take cannabis away from people than cigarettes and alcohol - if it's not something everybody uses every day, there's less resistance against it being taken away.

"Legalized cannabis may lead to some accidents, but that should be no concern because currently-legal alcohol causes more accidents." (GingerCorslette, you didn't say that literally, but that's what it sounds like to me).Yes, alcohol is a bad offender! And we cannot even get rid of it (as mentioned before, prohibition didn't work).Why then would we voluntarily add another drug to the mix that could add more accidents if we can avoid it?We're not really saying "Those extra deaths don't matter because the drug that caused them is less harmful", are we? It's once again the argument where we admit that cannabis is harmful but that's fine because it's less harmful than something else.

Okay, I don't feel like writing more about the other arguments right now. May still add something later.

I guess one of the best ways to deal with the 'dangerous drug driving' is make a rule that only allows people to take them at home/inside buildings and not be allowed to drive until after a certain time after taking the drug.

I mean, it may not work 100%, but current cannabis prohibition is not 100% effective either. It would cut out a lot of potential accidents though.

Also Sun legalising cannabis may reduce accidents in another way: currently to acquire cannabis you have to go through criminals. Who knows what is in the stuff the criminals provide. If it is regulated, it will be much safer to use, thus less risk of illness.

Also another argument I've seen thats quite amusing is 'cannabis tears apart society, it should be kept illegal'. And why does it tear apart society? Because its illegal. If it wasn't it probably wouldn't be viewed as so terrible, thus wouldn't damage the prospects of young people's futures (since that who the anti people seem to like referring to). Its like saying something should stay illegal because its illegal.

Either way, so long as people are informed of the risks, its up to them to decide whether to take drugs or not, that decision shouldn't be made for them. Just implement rules to minimise risk if/when people do decide to take drugs.

« Last Edit: September 15, 2015, 02:55:14 PM by atommo »

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Unimaginative Username

Also Sun legalising cannabis may reduce accidents in another way: currently to acquire cannabis you have to go through criminals. Who knows what is in the stuff the criminals provide. If it is regulated, it will be much safer to use, thus less risk of illness.

That's probably an argument which is more applicable to amphetamines - though I have heard of a few cases like this with cannabis - where the drug is being taken along with a mix of impurities which are more harmful than the actual drug; probably to bulk up the pills/capsules/ect as a way of selling the same amount of product for more money.

They are most probably overrated, and so far the guys I saw on youtube seem to have lost an IQ point or so by the excessive use of it. But oh well, if enough people wants it unbanned, it might eventually be unbanned, right? Not my country (not yet at least ) not my problem If I was living there and it got unbanned, I could have tried it once or twice, but I'm not overall a "narcotic"-happy guy, not drooling over it or anything.

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